


A Simple History

by korik



Series: Speak Without Words [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Gen, How Do I Tag, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 18:25:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4148220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/korik/pseuds/korik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My Inquisitor, Vaeln Trevelyan, and the Commander of the Inquisition's forces have a conversation.</p><p>I really don't know how to tag this, wow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Simple History

The books were thick, heavy, and smelled of dust and ages, some well worn, many scribbled in because paper, paper was always a hard thing to find - but one made her pause, hesitate, toughened finger pads tracing the words:

_Magick: A Historie_

“Have you found one you like?”

She was glad for her reflexes, saving the ancient thing from the merciless floor, but it did not save the sensation creeping over her face, a wicked burn of someone caught. A smile pulled on the edges of her lips as she laughed, turning with mock annoyance, the book, Andraste preserve, heavy as it was, a looming threat. “Commander, do you often terrify guests?”

A brown gloved hand rose in defense, the brows over his eyes rising with the usual false flinch to the side, of course expecting nothing to come of it, but enjoying the game for what it was. “Just as often as the Inquisitor deems it necessary to pilfer through my disenchanting piles of books.”

Vaeln laughed again, her smile broad as she gazed up at him; always just too tall, this one. Down came the book as she paced to return it to its place on Cullen’s shelf. “You study magic?” As he began to smile, she hastily added, “Still?”

He had moved his way to behind his desk, unbuckling his sheathed sword to lay it across the new letters, new reports that were certain to plague him, answering in his usual, official tone. “It benefits the Inquisition and the Mages who have been given refuge here if I do, and though I am a Templar no longer, and, to be honest - ” his tongue clicked in his mouth, softening his voice as his body adjusted with it as though a weight dropped down his spine, freeing him a little, “ - I do not enjoy time wasted.”

Vaeln shook her head, her turn now to approach the opposite side of his desk, gesturing towards the papers that without effort swallowed it, a hungry creature to never be satisfied, all bearing marks of the Inquisition. “I admire your dedication, ser, but do you think you could perhaps be underestimating how much work you already do?”

His response was immediate, “I have dedicated myself to the Inquisition, to the Cause. It will never be enough - ”

Her hand rose, gentle in the way it beseeched a pause, and she felt her brows pinch. “What about what you desire?”

The man looked momentarily taken aback, golden eyes flicking one way for a moment as though startled from a particularly ingrained personal mantra, and, in what she guessed was also a reflex, crossed his arms across the armored breastplate of his chest. Half a second later, one hand curled from its defensive position to rub along the back of his neck. He seemed…out of sorts, voice cloaked in quiet uncertainty. “I…confess I had not - ”

The way he blinked at her, a discombobulated animal taking slow steps towards a place where they had once learned was only fire and pain, Vaeln felt that tingling at the back of her neck, trickling down her face - it was all gone the second he spoke again. In fact it felt as though it were quite the opposite.

“Inquisitor, forgive me, but - when was it that you joined the Ostwick Circle?”

Her breath came out in a soft exhale, but the hovering smile remained, a wall between her and the memories that bludgeoned the inside of her skull. “I-I was eight - and for as long as I could remember before that, I’d lived with the sense of…something. Something more, I suppose - ” she swallowed the growing lump in her throat, working to avoid conjuring the event in its entirety. “ - say you’re in an isolated room, all else dark and quiet, and a single, piercing shaft of light has broken through it all. You’re the only one who sees it - sees the flecks that dance and spiral - the thing that has always been there, illuminating.” She shook her head, and with the realization that it had moved, drew her hand back from its subconscious path along that memory.

He said nothing, but seemed to know to wait.

She continued, clearing her throat and letting her gaze touch the scant spaces where the letters did not cover the desk. “For as long as I could remember people spoke of magic and mages as though it was something to be afraid of - show the signs, the Templars would come, come and you’d never go home again.”

Between the sealed letters, some waxes red, others brown, gold, blue, and to the edge of them where the golden cord hung from his broad belt, framed in more gold, and brilliant, aching red. This too gave way to the ever constant silver, and finally, the flesh of his neck, scruff of chin, sharp nose and angled cheekbones. She was struck in that moment that he looked…scared. Grieved. So sorry for her beneath the arch of his brows and in the warm glint of eyes that hurt for something she felt he could almost imagine.

The words she thought to say were stuck, and she shrugged in what she hoped was an impassive manner.

Cullen, with care, seemed to draw breath, and plunge towards an unknown. “I must ask your forgiveness again - if I have frightened you - ”

Her laughter seemed to confuse him further, cutting him off and causing gilded eyes to widen again, to almost marvel - but Vaeln couldn’t help it. “Maybe once, but that would have been a different day, a different me.” She thought of the scar that marked her belly. “I would let you know,” she promised, voice strong, gathering together in the face of memories long turned to dreams, nightmares.

More cold, burdensome weights clattered to the floor from the once-Templar’s shoulders, and the scowl that had so pulled his features into distress eased. He nodded, breath once again coming evenly, secure and unburned. “I wish only to serve.”

The jaunt of her lips felt sweeter this time, and some of the sensation of before came back. “Then we should share strategies - do you know a bit of frost magic does wonders for some headaches?”


End file.
